Attention spans and the media

[Lencoboy]

I was having an interesting conversation with a staff member at my day centre on Thursday, and they said they think that one of the main reasons that society seems to be more blase about certain issues nowadays compared to in the past is largely due to our poorer attention spans in general. For example, we both seemed to agree that the 1990 Poll Tax Riots seemed to be the last true instance of collective political revolt in this country, preceded by the Miners' Strikes some 6 years earlier, plus there seemed to be far more collective outrage about issues like unemployment, etc, back then than there seems to be today.

We both concluded that as most people today are so bombarded with social media and endless 24/7 rolling news outlets, it's increasingly difficult to focus on certain topics at any given time, as the news in general seems to be more fast-moving now than ever before, and whatever articles people might view with horror today will probably be 'meh' and 'water under the bridge' tomorrow/next week/next month/next year, etc.

Unlike up until the 90s, where the vast majority only saw the news on TV at set times per day, they seemed more able to digest it and make sense of it, plus most news programmes seemed to actually report the news proper a lot more back then, rather than over-dramatise it like they often seem to today, especially with a lot of the in-yer-face on-screen text, which makes for even more overkill IMO.

What does anyone on here think?

[NoraB]

Makes sense to me Lenco..

We're utterly bombarded with information these days. (I know a Duran Duran song about that) and I think this is breeding indifference...

[Lencoboy]

Makes sense to me Lenco..

We're utterly bombarded with information these days. (I know a Duran Duran song about that) and I think this is breeding indifference...

I do think that 'information overload' has a tendency to alienate people all the more nowadays.

However (and conversely), I have noticed since the BBC redesigned their news site around 2010, they have seemingly toned down a lot of the more 'sensationalist' stuff, whereas many other outlets have continued to 'up the ante' over the same 12-year period.

Of course some news/media consumers get kicks and excitement from OTT exaggerated stories whilst many others find them increasingly off-putting and too unpalatable.

A typical example is overuse of certain words like 'crisis', which can often devalue such terms in the long run.

[pulisa]

"Crisis" now means "issue". Everything's a crisis so anyone who is going through a genuine crisis stands no chance of getting any help.

[Lencoboy]

"Crisis" now means "issue". Everything's a crisis so anyone who is going through a genuine crisis stands no chance of getting any help.

Exactly my point Pulisa.

Overuse and indeed misuse of certain emotive words/terms certainly lessens their original intended impact as time goes on.

And yes I know language often changes over time, but sometimes, unfortunately, for the wrong reasons.

Plus of course lazy (and sometimes even rogue) journalism increasingly seems to have a lot to answer for.

[ErinKC]

My friend and I were having the same conversation yesterday. It's kind of horrifying how we jump from crisis to crisis and then just forget about it. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, etc...

The other issues is that with "news" coming from 1000 different corners all of it just becomes nonsense. I don't believe that "truth" exists anymore. What's real and what's not? What's important and what's not? Etc... So, I also think people just tend to give up trying to follow anything.

[Lencoboy]

My friend and I were having the same conversation yesterday. It's kind of horrifying how we jump from crisis to crisis and then just forget about it. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, etc...

The other issues is that with "news" coming from 1000 different corners all of it just becomes nonsense. I don't believe that "truth" exists anymore. What's real and what's not? What's important and what's not? Etc... So, I also think people just tend to give up trying to follow anything.

Exactly.

It's like most people no longer care that much about Covid anymore, but that's probably because fewer people in general are being hospitalised and dying of it with the Omicrons now than with the previous variants (Original, Alpha, Delta, etc), though of course that's more for discussion in the Covid threads rather than here, plus many subjects often only have a limited shelf life as the news generally moves on in most instances.

Let's face it, only just a few short years back certain media outlets were putting the fear of God into us over things such as paedos, certain Islamic factions plotting to blow up our city/town centres willy-nilly, and hoodie-clad teenagers lurking on nearly every street corner waiting to mug, beat us up, shoot or stab us to death willy-nilly, which often in many instances exacerbated such 'moral panics' all the more and kind of became 'self-fulfilling prophecies', but then moved onto other 'folk devils'/'bogeyman' subjects.

Of course we should by all means (and within reason) have our wits about us concerning the above things, but not unnecessarily panic ourselves to death over them, especially as we're probably more likely to get run over by buses or end up in car crashes, etc, when out and about than be randomly attacked by violent youths, muggers, terrorists, etc.

[Lencoboy]

I was also thinking today about certain past tragic events, especially those concerning children and young people as victims back in the 90s; e.g, James Bulger, Stephen Lawrence, Dunblane, etc, all still seem to resonate quite profoundly with many people today, despite the passage of time and the fact that many other likewise tragic events (especially similar to the first two) have occurred during the intervening period between then and now, but don't seem to be as well-remembered or discussed as much.

Not necessarily that people no longer actually care per se (nor am I trivialising more recent tragic events), but more due to the main subject of this particular thread; information saturation/overload and our generally poorer attention spans often as a consequence.

[Phill2]

I was thinking the same thing the other day.
The world was a much better place before we had live coverage from around the world.
As for (anti)social media I'm proud to say I'm not on any of it.
I did sign up for fake book many years ago but deleted my account pretty quickly after seeing all of the crazies on there.

[Lencoboy]

I was thinking the same thing the other day.
The world was a much better place before we had live coverage from around the world.
As for (anti)social media I'm proud to say I'm not on any of it.
I did sign up for fake book many years ago but deleted my account pretty quickly after seeing all of the crazies on there.

Fakebook = Fake News (a lot of the time)!

And at the same time it often does the 'genuine' users a great disservice, such as yourself in the past, plus it's largely been tainted by a lot of the 'fakesters' on there, many of whom with agendas, and of course, often too much time on their hands.

I have never subscribed to the Wild West that is social media where basically anything goes, and never intend to either.